Survival in Cold Waters: Staying Alive
Abstract
It is quite astonishing that over the centuries, hundreds and thousands of humans have drowned in cold water, and it is only in the last 50 years that anyone has taken this death toll seriously. Death was attributed to drowning from an inability to stay afloat and vague terms, such as exposure. This is because death at sea was, and to some degree still is considered an occupational hazard. Fishermen for instance, who are most at risk, simply considered it as on occupational hazard and fate. Any attempt at protection was to float the person in rather than out of the water. 2. It took until the middle of the Second World War for the UK and Germany, and post-Korean war for the US to realize that there was a problem from sudden cold water immersion. 3. As a result, internationally over the last half of the 20th century, there has been considerable human experimentation in cold water physiology. The pioneering work was done in the mid- 1940s and 1950s, but by the 1960s, it appears to have been forgotten and needed to be relearned. The advent of the offshore oil industry created a demand for more research to produce better immersion suits. This created a flurry of experimentation in the 1980s and 1990s. A number of these experiments have been cited to give the reader the wide scope of them.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA519342
Entities
People
- C. J. Brooks
Organizations
- Government of Canada